


Bad blood

by Servena



Category: Charlie Bone Series | Children of the Red King - Jenny Nimmo
Genre: Gen, Power Dynamics, The King's Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 03:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8186902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Servena/pseuds/Servena
Summary: Emma had always thought that the red king looked sad. How couldn’t he be, seeing his children, generation after generation, at war with each other?





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the Summerchallenge 2016

Emma was one of the last people to enter the king’s room. As usual, the children sitting at the round table in the middle were not spread out evenly, but separated into two sides. Over all of them watched the red king in his portrait on the opposite wall. He was dressed in a red cloak that gave him his name and his dark eyes saw everything that happened in this room. Emma had always thought that he looked sad. How couldn’t he be, seeing his children, generation after generation, at war with each other?

She sat down next to Charlie Bone and smiled at him as she pulled out her books. On his other side there was white-haired Billy Raven, and next to him Lysander Sage, his dark face already creased in concentration over his books, and Tancred Torsson, blond hair slightly sizzling with electricity.

Right across from her on the other side of the table sat Manfred Bloor. No longer a student, he had remained at Bloor’s academy, probably purely to make their lives more miserable. She made sure not to look directly at him as she let her gaze wander further. Brawny Dorcas Loom sat between the identically looking Branko twins Idith and Inez, who looked like black-haired dolls and barely ever spoke. Joshua Tilpin, a small boy with bits of paper stuck to his clothes, was sitting across from Tancred. Emma hoped that he wouldn’t try to provoke the stormbringer today.

“Don’t you have homework to do, Tolly?” Manfred asked sharply.

“Yes, Man - Sir”, she corrected herself hastily and buried her nose in her English book.

Five children to each side, she thought. The way it was in the beginning.

However, there were more than ten endowed children in Bloor’s academy. Gabriel Silk, who would have been on their side, was in the infirmary with the flu, and there was another child the Bloors knew nothing about.

The last one missing, red-haired Asa Pike, stepped through the door in this moment.

“Too late!” Manfred bellowed.

“Sorry”, Asa mumbled, not sounding particularly sorry. He was one of the few children who could mostly get away with this kind of behaviour. Emma thought that Manfred was secretly a bit afraid of Asa, or more specifically of the creature he became at dusk.

“Close the door. Silk’s not coming today.” Emma didn’t have to look up from her book to know that Manfred was grinning. He knows that the numbers are in his favour tonight, she thought.

As Asa moved to walk past the table, she put her book down and turned around to face him. ‘Come sit with us’, she mouthed, careful not to break the rule of silence.

Asa hesitated, yellow eyes warily narrowed. She smiled at him.

For a moment, everyone in the room held their breaths. Then Asa Pike let himself fall onto the last chair next to her.

As she turned back, she just managed to catch the shocked expression that passed over Manfred’s face. For a moment it looked like he wanted to say something, order Asa to come over, but then he seemed to change his mind. He doesn’t want to lose face, she realised.

Everyone else had hurriedly turned back to their homework but Emma knew that they had felt it, too. The balance in the room had shifted. The numbers were in their favour. For now.


End file.
